INSECT LIFE SOUVENIRS OF A NATURALIST J.-H. FABRE DOCTEUR ÈS SCIENCES ‘that inimitable observer.’—Charles Darwin TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY THE AUTHOR OF ‘MADEMOISELLE MORI’ WITH A PREFACE BY DAVID SHARP, M.A., F.R.S. AND EDITED BY F. MERRIFIELD WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY M. PRENDERGAST PARKER MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1913 To the attentive eye the sight of industrial insects exhibiting the most refined art in their labours is a spectacle both strange and sublime. Human Reason is confounded by Instinct thus raised to the highest pitch of which Nature can offer an example, and the perturbation of intelligence increases on observing, patiently and minutely, the details of the life of those creatures most highly endowed with instinct. E. Blanchard. First Edition 1901. Reprinted 1913 PREFACE This little volume introduces the work of a great French naturalist to the reader of English. Réaumur, another Frenchman, is the greatest naturalist devoting himself to the observation of insects the world has yet seen. His six quarto volumes—Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des insectes—were published between 1734 and 1742. J.-H. Fabre, who happily is still with us, is second only to Réaumur in this part of the great field of Natural History. Though compatriots the two men are remarkably different in the nature of their genius. Réaumur, stately and slow, both discursive and diffuse. Fabre,—styled by Charles Darwin the immortal Fabre,—a most patient, indefatigable observer, ready to sacrifice everything to the carrying on of his work, but making deductions too rapidly from his observations, and taking a philosophical position from which he refuses to budge, even though he stand alone among the naturalists of this generation. Fabre’s great merit is his graphic portraiture of the living insect as it really is. This proves to be very different from insect life as it is usually supposed to be by the uninstructed, and as it is only too frequently represented to be in books. In the volume now offered to the reader he is almost entirely concerned with the instinct of Hymenoptera, the highest of the insect world in this respect. His studies of this subject have been continued in several other volumes, and he has also included in the series the results of many years of observation of the habits of other and very different insects.